The Microbiology Core will essential Microbiology services for multiple, projects associated with the Disparity. The aim for the Microbiology Core is to provide efficient service to optimize resources and aid collaborative activities. The facility will be designed with consideration for both immediate and future needs and takes advantage of existing resources and build on these for development of state-of-the- art facilities in the area. The Microbiology Core will foster and promote the incorporation of sophisticated microbiological methodology in the disparity Center research projects. The Microbiology facility will be responsible for culture, identification and enumeration of S. mutans from clinical oral samples. They will characterize the clinical S. mutans from clinical oral samples of xylitol susceptibility using multiple assays. The Microbiology facility will also catalog, isolates, store clinical samples and bacteria from the various populations and maintain a database for the information generated.